The Dish

We were kibbitzing about conservatism in the offices of the Atlantic yesterday, and Dwight Eisenhower came up. His shrewd handling of the exit from Korea was described as an example of conservative leadership in foreign affairs. No one could accuse Ike of not knowing what it was to serve or win wars. But he knew also the importance of restraint, withdrawal, cutting of losses. In many ways, history may judge him the best truly conservative president of the century. Reagan was conservative in a new, exhilarating but strange way. Given how far the U.S. had sunk, it needed radicalism to return to conservatism. But Eisenhower had no similar crisis of American confidence, and asked for no such idolization. And then a reader this morning sent me this quote from the two-term Republican. Can you imagine a Republican candidate saying the following today?

"Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace."

Those were the days.

A reader writes:

I must take great exception to your endorsement of The American Conservative as "more intellectually alive" than the Weekly Standard or National Review. This is a magazine that echoes the kind of crude anti-Israel attacks recently waged by Nick Kristof in the NYT and by George Soros in the NYRB. Indeed, they often go beyond those. Kristof and Soros at least pretend to make an argument. But TAC has run crude and vicious pieces by Taki, that are openly anti-Semitic. Look at the back issues if you don’t believe me. Moreover, their analytical pieces in essence blame Israel for all the faults of US foreign policy, including going to war in Iraq. Most of us who follow Israeli politics and policy, in fact, realize that most Israelis did not favor the Iraq war, and were worried far more about Iran.

I didn’t say it was all good. There is a vast amount in it with which I strongly disagree. I find the occasional anti-Semitic undertones repellent; and I found the recent hit-job on Obama callously insensitive (but it still prodded me to read Obama’s first book). But TAC does seem to me to be able to think outside the box of recent conservatism (as in torture and the war). And that’s a good thing, mixed with bad things.

Sense from Robert Samuelson.

New Orleans, 7 am. If you look closely, you can still see the damage.

Marty Peretz comes to the senator’s defense.

One more reason to be depressed about what has happened to honest, empirical, inquisitive conservatism.

I agree with Daniel Johnson. Sontag’s disparagement of new media and technology was not a function of her erudition but of her ignorance. Technology can empower writing – and has done so:

All the evidence suggests that television and the Internet, far from rendering serious literature obsolete, have vastly increased its popularity. Indeed, the Internet has brought about a renaissance of some literary genres—the letter (email), the diary (blogs), the little magazine (webzines)—that had seemed to be almost endangered species. The advent of narrowcasting has allowed specialized TV channels to multiply, giving artists unprecedented access to their publics. And the insatiable hunger of all mass media for ‘content’ means that there are now more people earning a living by writing than ever before.

How do we disentangle the politics of leading journalists from their politically engaged spouses? CJR raises the question:

Rainey singles out the Los Angeles Times’ political reporter Ronald Brownstein, who is married to Sen. John McCain’s spokeswoman; Matt Cooper, a former Time writer and current Washington editor for the still-not-launched Portfolio magazine, who is married to a strategist for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign; Nina Easton, Fortune’s Washington bureau chief and Fox News analyst, who is married to a McCain media strategist; and NBC’s Campbell Brown, who is hitched to Republican flack Dan Senor, who recently turned down a job with the Mitt Romney campaign, to avoid the appearance of a conflict.

Maybe you shouldn’t cover a campaign if your spouse is working for one of the candidates. Or disclose it in every piece you file.

The leading Christianist wants more options in the GOP primary, not a good sign for Romney:

"With the current field, there is, as of now, some difficulty in getting economic, foreign policy, and social conservatives all on the same page," Mr. Bauer said. "So, in view of that, I would like to see Thompson throw his hat in. I think he’d have a reasonable chance of getting support from all three of the legs of the stool President Reagan put together."

As we used to say at TNR, at least it’s counter-intuitive:

Social conservatives don’t need a president who will mount a crusade to re-criminalize abortion nationwide. They need a president who can persuade the American people that proclaiming a constitutional right to abort is barbaric. In all the decades since Roe v. Wade no politician has ever made this point clearly and forcefully.

Giuliani could be the first. He could argue that there can’t be a right to do wrong more persuasively and with much less political risk than any pro-life true believer. Just as it took a career anti-Communist to normalize relations with China, it may take a politician with no pro-life credentials to terminate Harry Blackmun’s reign of error. By fighting for the proposition that Roe v. Wade has distorted our constitutional law long enough, Giuliani could do more to defeat the culture of death than any of his Republican predecessors.